With
all the hype in marketing technology, how do you find the diamonds in the
rough? Start with tools and apps that build on your current tools.

If
you’re reading our blog, you probably use Oracle Eloqua and related Oracle
sales and marketing software. To help you extend the power of those products,
use our must-have app guide. We’ll also tell you when “another app” is not the
solution you need.

Are
you using SMS marketing in your Eloqua campaigns? This tool is the tool for
you. In a study of more than 1,000 campaigns,
Cellit found that SMS has 8 times the response rate of email in a recent study.
To achieve those benefits, use specialized tools like SMS Gateway to optimize
your campaigns.

How
This App Helps:

Two Way Support. Do you hate those “do not
reply” email addresses as much as we do? It’s much better to have two-way SMS
communication. This app makes it easy.

Enables SMS Friendly Copy. The app counts
characters as you enter messages so you can make sure your messages will
deliver properly.

International Support. You can purchase and use
From Numbers specific to each country you contact.

Tip:
Before you engage in a SMS campaign, confirm that you have gathered consent for
SMS marketing. Without that, your campaign is likely to be considered text message spam by the FTC.

The
day and time you send an email message impacts open rate, clicks and marketing
results. Don’t believe us? A Mailchimp study analyzed the best
times to send email. While the details vary by industry, two patterns stand
out. In terms of time, 10-11am was the optimal send time. That’s likely because
you are arriving in an inbox after people have cleaned out their inbox at the
start of the day. In terms of day of week, Monday to Thursday tend to be the
best days of the week. When you send on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, you’re
competing with the weekend which is quite a challenge.

How
do you find the optimum time to send marketing email for you situation? Use
Send Time Optimization. With this app, you can customize the send time for each
recipient. This is a valuable capability if your company has customers in
different time zones. It’s not just scheduling though. The app helps you gauge
when each subscriber is most likely to respond.

How
This App Helps

Improve Segmentation and Engagement. You can segment send time to each subscriber. That translates to better
open rates and clicks.

Save Time In Campaign Design. Instead of
manually designing campaign send times, this app takes care of the work for
you.

Important
note: To produce the best results, this app requires 6 months of customer data.

Does
your company use FedEx and UPS frequently? If so, this is the app for you.

Unlike
some of the other apps on this list, Share A Refund is focused on cost
optimization. In our view, this app is designed for companies that frequently
use shipping services but not enough to have a dedicated vendor manager. While
this might be a traditional marketing app, you can add value to the
organization by suggesting it.

Key
Features Of This App

No upfront fees. The service takes 50% of
refunds obtained as a performance fee.

Success
in sales requires persistence in the face of disappointment. Reading and
studying classic sales literature from Zig Ziglar and other sales experts will
help. But what if you are looking for something new? Gamification is one
solution you can explore to help your sales team. Just remember that
gamification is a supplement to a healthy, competitive compensation program not
a replacement!

Key
Capabilities of This App:

Increase Sales Recognition. Using gamification
mechanics like badges and rankings, you can recognize your sales team. For
instance, you might offer badges to recognize persistence in prospecting.

Run Sales Competitions. Do you want to offer
rewards for most sales of the quarter or the year? This app makes it easier to
run those competitions.

Tip:
Does your marketing department have some sales related key performance
indicators (e.g. number of marketing qualified leads)? If so, you may be able
to use gamification in your area as well.

If
you answered more than a hundred, you need this app to simplify your work.
Naturally, we favor the app since we created it. Instead of tinkering with
filters in all of your campaigns, this app does the heavy lifting of cleaning
your marketing contacts.

Key
Benefits For This App

Save time with centralized filters. Set your
campaign filters once in a single location. That means you will never lose
track of what you are working on.

Reduce marketing misfires. Without the right
filters, you might send the same offer to customers and prospects multiple
times. Those misfires make you look disorganized in a world that expects
personalization.

Supported Oracle products: Oracle Eloqua

Tip:
4 Thought Marketing has developed more than 70 connectors and cloud apps. Find
out more about our apps and Eloqua add-on-products.

Dirty
contact data is a constant problem in marketing especially when you operate
large scale campaigns.

You
pull in contacts from multiple opt-in forms, social sites, and events. How do
you ensure that every contact is formatted correctly? Manual checking does not
scale up when you have hundreds or thousands of contacts. The solution is to
use the Contact Washing Machine.

Launched
in 2015, Facebook Lead Ads opened new opportunities for lead generation.You can
generate a lead from Facebook without the user leaving the Facebook platform.

There’s
just one problem. How do you get the leads out of Facebook and into your
system? That’s where this app comes to the rescue. Use it to automatically
transfer leads from Facebook to Oracle Eloqua.

Key
Capabilities of This App

Increase Productivity. If you are already using
Facebook Lead Ads, this app will make your advertising more productive.

Increase Lead Quality. Specific data fields in
Facebook like email address have a high likelihood of being current and active
because those
email addresses are used for Facebook notifications and account management. Transferring that data to your database will help you to
enhance your marketing results by sending messages to active emails.

Supported Oracle products: Oracle Eloqua

When
“There’s An App For That” Thinking Fails

Another
app will not solve all problems in marketing. When customer attention is
captured by a rival with a new offer, you are going to struggle. Take the
success of Dollar Shave Club for example. They’ve built a business around mail
order shaving blades, an accessible price point, and compelling viral video (25 million
views and counting). Apps will not help their larger rivals catch up because
their success is not app driven.

After
you save time and resources using apps, what’s next for your marketing? Pursue
a marketing breakthrough by engaging 4 Thought Marketing. Talk to us about
achieving reducing GDPR compliance risk without killing your marketing results.